


Hand Covers Bruise

by kinfolk



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Canon Compliant (for now), Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Issy and Max are only mentioned a few times, M/M, Sacrifices, Trauma study, experimental writing style, uh i think thats it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 22:30:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18061382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinfolk/pseuds/kinfolk
Summary: Michael just wants to go home.





	Hand Covers Bruise

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've posted in years, so please be kind.

Out in the middle of the desert, Michael sees entire galaxies. He makes up stories for himself, stories about his family, entire realities where he is safe and loved and missed. His people, whoever they are, are just out of reach - but it’s okay, he thinks, he’s waited this long to go home. He can wait a little longer still.

 

-

 

Home may be the first thing he ever wants, but knowledge is the first thing he’s ever freely given, so he latches onto it. Starts thinking that maybe enough of the latter could solve the former. He thinks of it as an equation, C = A + B. Solve for home. If he can just learn enough, get the right pieces to the puzzle, then one day he might be able to plot a trajectory home. (or better yet, his 7 year old mind supplies, he could build a _spaceship_ ).

It helps that he’s a quick learner. English and Math and Science all come easier to him than they do to Max and Isabel, but so does panic, and fear, and the meltdowns that destroy entire rooms. You see, foster kids are supposed to be difficult for a few weeks, but given time, they’re expected to adjust to the new environment. Michael is different. He aches for the stars, and the ache continues to grow for months until he feels like he could be consumed by it, until he feels ready to explode. And then he does.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing the first time, he just knows that the pressure in his chest is starting to suffocate him, feels like he hasn’t been able to breathe in days. So he goes into the bathroom, closes the door, stands in front of the mirror and screams.

It’s only when it’s over that he realises what he’s done. The glass has been smashed out of the mirror and windows and all of the pipes have burst, and Michael is stood frozen at the centre of it all, is still there when his foster mom bursts through the door moments later. She puts the pieces together for herself, and he’s beaten with a leather belt until his skin breaks.

The pain only makes the hurricane more volatile. But once it starts, it never really stops. He learns that violence brings its own knowledge. It imparts an endless stream of information that he wishes he didn’t need, things he’ll never be able to forget.

In foster care he learns how to set a broken nose. Learns the sickly pop of dislocation and the bright static of a head injury. Learns he can go three days without food before he starts losing consciousness, and that he can be held under for exactly 48 seconds before instinct kicks in and he starts swallowing lungfuls of water.

When he can he still throws himself into maths and science, into solving his equation, but the other knowledge is always present. An immutable white noise.

 

(When he finally gets control over his telekinesis, it’s less of a learning than it is a becoming. An acceptance. A welcoming. Boy _as_ hurricane.)

 

-

 

Michael Guerin is 15 and he’s bolted so many times that he can no longer tell whether he’s running towards something or away from it. He just knows that his skin feels too tight, like hand me down clothes and pink blisters. Running doesn’t ease the feeling, not really, but there’s power in removing himself from his own life. In amputating the infected limb.

One night, during a sleepover at the Evans’, Isabel turns to him and says “You know it doesn’t matter that you live with other people, right? You’re still family.”    
The three of them are wrapped around each other on a pull out couch in the TV room, covered in blankets and empty junk food wrappers. Other than Max’s gentle snoring, her voice is the only sound in the whole house.

It takes everything he has not to burst into tears.  
  
It’s a half-truth. An almost-truth. Michael is family. He’s also spare parts.  
They’re psychically linked, soul-bonded, and if he focuses hard enough he can feel Issy’s presence in shades of blue and Max in summer greens, their collective energy cutting along and through everything else. It’s even stronger for Issy, their connection somehow having survived the three years Michael was placed out of state. So he doesn’t ask why she’s suddenly whispering assurances into the dark. He knows that she can feel his torn seams, his steady bleed of hurt. If he was stronger he would ask if she can also feel the hollows, the parts of him that _haven’t_ survived.

He doesn’t say it, will _never_ say it, but he thinks maybe that’s his purpose. His pain as cosmic counterweight. Pieces of himself torn out as payment for Max and Isabel’s bedtime stories and Sunday pancakes and new shoes.

He’s family but he’s been pulled apart, peeled back and reshaped into something new. Something separate.

 

-

 

He wants to go home. He wants to not be so angry. He wants to not have so many reasons to be angry. He wants out of his body, out of the storm, off of this fucking rock. He wants so badly to be a blank slate again, like the three of them were when they were released from their pods, small and untouched by the world. He wants and wants until that’s all there is anymore – just the storm and the ache. 

 

-

 

At some point he just learns to live with it. He finds out that with enough practice he can learn to live with just about anything.

 

-

 

By the time his senior year rolls around, everything feels better. Balanced, almost. He feels himself wading through the days, becoming equal parts knowledge and noise, brother and storm, and something else too – something hopeful.

It’s the year his running away becomes more of a staying away. He’s close enough to the finish line now that he doesn’t want to take any avoidable risks, not when he is so close to getting a scholarship, so close to surviving. Sleeping in the back of his shitty truck instead of a warm bed is just another sacrifice, and what’s one more added to the list?

He can give more of himself if it means finally getting something back.

There’s an infinite amount of stardust and that stardust is inside him, and that might not mean he’s infinite too but it does mean something. He knows it when he can’t sleep, when he’s lying in his truck staring up at the stars and the noise builds and grows until it fills all of the night’s dark edges. In those moments he feels his otherness like a warm blanket, because the world can’t touch him if it can’t reach him, and he is floating a thousand feet above his body.

He doesn’t stop feeling tethered to the stars in the daylight, but life provides him with enough distractions that on a good day Michael can go hours without feeling the dislocation. He drifts through AP classes and spends lunch breaks teaching himself how to play songs he’s heard on the radio on borrowed guitars and the rest of his time is filled with Issy and Max, watching bad romantic comedies or fucking around in the scrapyard or trying to explain Max’s science homework to him between mouthfuls of fries.

He’s used to no one acknowledging the blue around his lips. No one knowing to look for him up where the oxygen is thinner, no one wanting to.

 

-

 

Alex Manes storms into his life and its only takes him 60 seconds, one minute alone with Michael, to see what that everyone else has ignored.

Alex sees him, sees his truck and his blue lips and his feet dangling up past the clouds. And Michael should’ve questioned then and there why it was so easy for him, how he knew exactly where to look, exactly what to look out for, but he doesn’t - because suddenly Alex is there and he’s offering Michael a lifeline.

The shed behind Alex’s house is like a different planet. It’s kind, and quiet, and Alex is giving him everything he never knew he was allowed, giving without ever asking for anything in return. It’s completely alien to him, absolutely terrifying, and yet for the first time in his life his feet are touching the ground.

Michael wants to return the favour so bad his body aches with it.

But then a few weeks into whatever it is they’re doing, Alex offers him a chance for that too. He brings him his brother’s guitar, and Michael is overwhelmed by it, feels undone by Alex’s understanding, and then Alex is leaning in and suddenly it’s too much.

He doesn’t know what it’ll mean to choose Alex, but it feels incomprehensibly big, important in a way nothing else has ever been.

So he sits on the feeling, pulls away from Alex just to see if he can. He spends his nights in his truck and pulls at the edges of his longing, thinks of all the times he chose to have strangers’ hands on his body, used sex to feel a touch that didn’t bruise. He thinks about Alex. His soft eyes and bright laugh. His own bruises, the ones he hides under long sleeves at school, but sometimes leaves uncovered around Michael. He knows that the universe has to have balance, that if he chooses happiness then inevitably something else will be stripped from him as payment, but he realises that he doesn’t care. He wants Alex.

After five days away, Michael goes to find him at his work. He wants to apologise, to find the right words to heal them both, but he was never taught how to use language like that. Instead he kisses Alex, pressing in hard and a little desperate, trying to convey everything he doesn’t have the words for yet.

When Alex kisses him back it feels like coming home.

Two weeks later Jesse Manes finds them, and whatever they have, whatever peace they’ve found, is smashed along with his hand.

Alex leaves right after graduation and Michael realises the irony in it, that he’s not the one running away this time.

 

-

 

There’s something about the way the events stack up that day (Alex, hammer, amnesia, fire)  that makes it feel fake, somehow. His hand is ruined, his sister believes he’s a killer, and three girls’ bodies are now burnt to a crisp. 

Michael feels numb. 

He’ll never play guitar again. He’ll never sleep again. He’ll never get the smell out of his nose. He sacrificed any peace he had left for the people he loves, and he knows in his bones that he would do it again, but the knowledge doesn’t bring him any comfort.

The moment Isabel kills those girls he feels something break inside him.

The next day he realises he can’t feel Issy and Max anymore, their psychic bond completely severed. Somehow, in all the violence, he managed to sacrifice that too.

 

-

 

Alex leaves for basic and Michael stays, and maybe it’s to protect his family, but maybe it’s also a kind of punishment. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to run away or towards anything anymore.

Max slowly stops speaking to him, and Isabel buries herself in community college, and without any distractions the noise in his head becomes so loud that it feels as though the rest of the world is underwater. It’s fine though, it’s how it was always supposed to be. Michael cutting pieces of himself out for their comfort, Michael being cut out for their comfort.

(Years later Max tries telling him that he has never done anything for anybody, and for the first time in twelve years his control slips, leaving Max in a heap on the floor.)

 

-

 

Michael is 21 and 23 and 26 and Alex is back from the war, but not really, not with any permanency.

Alex is given leave, sometimes weeks and sometimes months, and each time he only ever allows himself 7 days to spend in Roswell. Michael knows this because every time, without fail, Alex finds his way to Michael’s door.

The first time Alex comes back is painful, the break still fresh even with three years of distance. They fight and they fuck, and somehow things don’t end badly between them. They don’t actually end at all, which, in its own way, just creates a bigger problem.

The second time involves a week of early morning coffees and soft smiles and a trashy horror movie marathon that keeps getting interrupted by Alex’s very insistent hands, and Michael lets himself hope. He lets himself think that maybe this time Alex will stay. But at the end of the week Alex still packs up his things, and Michael is once again left to unlearn his touch.  

The third time a ghost shows up at his door, he wants so badly to have learned his lesson. Alex looks like shit. He’s in a hoodie and sweats, hair mussed, shoulders sagging under some invisible weight. Michael knows he should tell him to fuck off, but the words are sitting heavy in his throat, and before he knows what he’s doing he’s pushing the door open and stepping back, silently inviting Alex in.

This time around, Alex is more hesitant. He pauses before walking into Michael’s tiny apartment, and seems to be weighing the pros and cons of sitting down at the couch or the small table before Michael intervenes, setting two beers on the table and pulling out a chair.

The silence between them stretches on for a long moment before Michael finally croaks out – “Why are you here, Alex?”  
Alex looks at him, but his eyes are far away. His lips are cracked and seem to pull uncomfortably as he opens his mouth to reply.  
“Guerin -” he starts, before wincing and briefly closing his eyes against his own voice. “Baghdad was fucked. I just. I want something to not be completely fucked. Please.”

And it’s selfish, it’s so fucking selfish of him, to ask for Michael like this. But Michael is selfish too. He want and wants and wants, and above everything else he wants Alex. Wants Alex to want him.  
So he downs his beer, wishing it was a bottle of acetone, and stands up. “Come on then, come to bed.” he half-whispers, stretching his hand out towards Alex’s tired form. Alex shudders out a breath and slides his hand into Michaels, letting himself be pulled towards Michael’s room.

Two days later Alex tells him that he’s going back. That it could’ve been over, he could’ve walked away, could’ve come home for good, but that he’s chosen another deployment. The bags under his eyes are still so dark they look like bruises.  
Michael is furious. He wants to ask him to stay, even though he knows it won’t mean anything. He wants to tell him that when he leaves he takes the gravity with him. That his first leaving broke Michael wide open, that he never learnt how to stop the bleeding. Instead, he tells Alex to get the fuck out of his bed. To stay gone.

Life has a balance, it gives and it takes, but Michael only ever feels the taking.

(Boy as ache. Man as open wound.)

 

-

 

Michael is 28 and Alex Manes is back for good. He’s back, and he’s standing at the door of Michael’s airstream, and the moment gives him such a strong sense of déjà vu that it knocks the air out of his lungs.

He’s not back in Roswell for Michael, of course he isn’t, but that doesn’t stop them from being pulled back into each other’s orbit. Alex is different now, colder, meaner, or at least he wants Michael to think he’s those things, and it’s only fair. He has sacrificed parts of himself too.

They’re not teenagers anymore. They don’t trust like they used to, have been hurt and hurt each other more times than they would care to admit to anyone else. But that’s the thing – they’re not anyone else. They’re Michael and Alex. Different shades of the same bruise.

It’s been ten years and Michael still feels tethered to Alex Manes. He looks at him and it feels no different than sitting outside and staring up at the sky on nights he can’t sleep.

(he looks at Alex and he feels safe and loved and real)

He feels desperate for him, for what could be and what almost was. It’s a constant ache that’s even worse when he’s near – when his hands are close but not on him. And it’s amazing, he thinks. All those years of violence and casual sex and he’s still touch-starved.  

They kiss at the reunion, and days later they fuck in his trailer, and for those brief, bright moments, they’re back in the shed, back to the beginning, back to a planet where nothing is broken, and nothing needs to be fixed.

It doesn’t last, but Michael isn’t expecting it to. Not yet, at least.

This time when Alex walks away, Michael isn’t worried. He knows he’s not going very far. It still hurts, of course it does, but he’s learnt a lot from Alex’s stuttered presence over the last ten years. He understands now that he isn’t the only one who feels pulled apart, reshaped, and remade by their pain. That, like Michael, Alex is still learning how to recognise the person he has become.

More than that, he knows that there are things they still can’t talk about, things they’re still trying to learn the language for.

One day they will know the right words, will know how to ask for all the things that they’re already so willing to give.

He knows it because Alex keeps leaving, but he also keeps coming back.

Because the day they first kissed was the day Michael stopped running for good.

Because Alex is the only thing that has ever felt like home.  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote all of the scenes out of order over the span of a week, so if it feels cobbled together in any places just blame it on that. or you can pretend it was an important narrative choice. that works too.
> 
>  
> 
> come say hi to me @ klavshargreeves on tumblr!  
> I'm always yelling about traumatised characters over there too


End file.
